Norwegian Farmers and Their Protest Against WTO

For several weeks a group of Norwegian farmers traveled across Germany and Switzerland to the WTO headquarters in Geneva/Switzerland. The Norwegian Farmers‘ Association (Norges Bondelag, Oslo) had organised the march to put emphasis on the farmers‘ concerns who all strugggle for their existence.The following joint declaration was handed in in Geneva on July 26 on the occasion of the WTO preparations for the Hongkong conference.

Joint Declaration June/July 2005 – Calling for every country’s right to produce food

We, the undersigned, share strong concerns on the current WTO negotiations, which aim to agree on agricultural modalities at the Hong Kong Ministerial Meeting in December, 2005.

We demand that WTO rules must promote mutual coexistence of various forms of agriculture in all countries. An aggressive “one-size-fits-all” approach in trade liberalization does not fit the agricultural sector, and does not allow for coexistence of different models of agriculture and maintenance of non-trade concerns in each country.

We also demand, that these negotiations should be based on the principle that every country has a right to protect and support production of food for its own consumption, in order to guarantee food security and to secure an appropriate level of self-sufficiency for each country.

We also urge that a transparent decision-making process must be ensured in the WTO agricultural negotiations.

The following principles and points should be made part of the WTO negotiations and be fully reflected in the modalities:

Basic Principles

1. Non-Trade Concerns should be fully and specifically reflected in agricultural modalities.

2. Special and differential treatment for developing countries that are not competitive in the agricultural sector, should be taken fully into consideration in order to meet their actual needs of rural development, food and livelihood security.

Positions

1. Appropriate levels and forms of tariffs should be ensured considering the characteristics of the respective products in each country.

2. Each member shall be allowed to designate a sufficient number of products as sensitive or special products. Sensitive/special products should be given enough flexibility in terms of tariffs and TRQs.

3. Capping of tariffs is not acceptable at all.

4. Flexibility should be ensured for tariff reduction formula under the tiered approach, and Uruguay-Round formula should be applied in each tier. We are opposed to applying Swiss formula.

5. Special safeguards for agricultural products should be ensured for both developed and developing countries.

6. WTO rules must not undermine the current preferential access given to imports from especially the least developed and ACP countries by a number of developed countries. Without such preferential schemes these countries will lose out to the major exporters.

7. Specific, more stringent discipline should apply to all forms of support linked to products that are exported. All forms of export support on products exported to developing countries must be phased out and developing countries must be allowed to protect themselves against subsidized imported goods.

8. Capping of product-specific AMSs should be designed in a way to accommodate farm policy reform in each country.

9. Genuine food aid for humanitarian purposes should be secured in order to address natural and social disasters.

Source: Turid Sylte, 23.06.2005